Beauty and Pain
by amalspach
Summary: "There was a reason the goddess had never provided Piper with a proposition, and it wasn't because she knew the demigod wouldn't except it. Piper had always been the weak link, deep down. Beautiful things, after all, are so easily broken." In other words, a dark Piper AU I wrote for no reason. Oneshot.


**So here is my first (and probably only) dark Piper fic. I am doing this solely because I was left alone for a couple minutes and got bored, so I copied everybody else and made an evil AU for no reason. Sorry in advance if my short and probably crappy oneshot is predictably short and crappy.**

* * *

There was a reason Piper was never taunted by Gaea like her brethren, she had just never seen it. There was a reason the goddess had never provided Piper with a proposition, and it wasn't because she knew the demigod wouldn't except it. Piper had always been the weak link, deep down. Beautiful things, after all, are so easily broken.

She was the sure thing. The one destined to accept. It wouldn't even take any effort to tear her apart, and Gaea knew it. She knew she had Piper from the instant the girl joined up.

"How would you like this all to be over?" the goddess whispered sleepily, her voice soothing and soft as Piper watched her friends battle the giants alongside the Olympians. "How would you like to be safe and sound again, free of responsibility and heartbreak and sorrow in your own version of the world?" Piper choked a little, seeing all the people she had come to know - Annabeth and Leo and Jason, her Jason - fight for their lives before her. All while she stood by and chatted with their enemy, doing nothing. They . . . they would despise her. "How would you like to have everything you ever wanted at the tips of your fingers, to not be a pretty voice anymore?" Seizing a victory, Gaea hissed louder, drowning out Piper's thoughts. "You knew it would come to this at last, my child. One will be sacrificed for my cause eventually. It could be any of them, my little ants. It could be Hazel or Frank or one of yours. It could be your beloved Leo and Jason." She didn't want to cry, but she did, her tears flowing over her face freely, creating hot and messy streaks. "Join me, Piper McLean. Join me, and you will be powerful. Join me, and you can spare one of your friends from this fate. Join me, and you will never be alone again."

Piper gazed at her friends - no, her family - and then wiped away the wet of her eyes. She gazed at the giants and the ground and the endless, dark sky and she _hardened_. She made a choice.

When Gaea awoke, Piper extended a hand. She refused to gaze at said family again, knowing what they would think of her. She didn't want to see their shock and disappointment, didn't want to experience the guilt that would wrap her up like a thick blanket. With a lazy smile, like she had expected the whole thing, Gaea took it. Perhaps she always knew Piper would choose.

Piper squeezed that hand and then . . .

. . . then she felt nothing. Not anymore.

* * *

She was sitting on a throne, watching the world burn. And she was smiling all the while.

Yes, she was watching the world burn on her throne of darkness and ruin and she couldn't be happier. Or emptier, perhaps, but that was all relative. Ruthlessness fit her like a glove.

Piper couldn't believe she had ever wanted to stop Gaea. Her poor, misguided friends were too noble for their own goods.

Ex-friends. Chaos doesn't have time for friends. By stripping her of humanity, Gaea had given her a tremendous gift - the gift of freedom. No longer would she worry about crushes and monsters and fathers who didn't have time for their daughters or mothers who didn't stay.

Villains had all the fun, after all.

"Are you ready to join the fight, my child?" beckoned her patron. "The siege on Camp Half Blood is about to begin." Right on time.

"With pleasure," smiled Piper, her eyes gleaming with calculation and cruelty. Arising from her obsidian chair, she spread her nails, admiring the clean skin between the gaps. She would have to appreciate that cleanliness while she could, as in moments, they would soon be stained red.

* * *

Piper couldn't help but revel in her wake of destruction. The world was turning _dark dark dark_ and the ground was bleeding out. They were winning easily, and she was leading the charge.

Apparently a divided seven was a useless one, and it was almost comically simple to splay her friends apart, to watch the whites of their eyes fade into a hazy gray. Dust flew behind her, combing the ground into a misty path of slaughter. All her old haunts, the nights spent laughing with Jason and Leo - with a swipe of her faithful Katropis, her one _true_ friend, they were obliterated. The screams emanating from her victims were an addicting sound, and the taste of blood on her tongue was enticing.

And then her patron, her savior, her leader through the darkness appeared. She was wide awake and, quite like Piper, had no love lost over the camp. Out of the glorious rise of the goddess, Jason finds her, and for a moment, Piper wonders if this is _her_. What was she thinking?

Should she go after the people she forfeited her life to save?

"Piper, I don't know what's happened to you, but we need you to help us," he gasped, and she took inventory of him silently. Jason's shirt was torn nearly to pieces, he was bleeding from small wounds in several places, and the tiny scar on his lip was red and throbbing, like it sensed the danger he was in. His blue eyes were wide and confused and sad, filled with longing and the smallest shred of hope and love for her. It was those eyes that nearly undid her. "We need you, Pipes. _I_ need you."

But then Gaea cackled in the distance, swatting at brave little Leo like a fly, and the spell was broken. Piper brushed the boy she loved away.

"Fly away and forget, Wonder Boy," she spat back, a dastardly smirk biting at her lips. "It's what you do best." As she walked off to harass more half bloods and aid her great grandmother, she only looked back once. Jason remained rooted to the spot, his face the perfect picture of betrayal and heartbreak.

* * *

Her dress was incredible, she thought with satisfaction. The thing was a sparkling black, studded with red rhinestones and clinging to every inch of her. It ended at her knees and plunged into a sleeveless sweetheart neckline. If only there was anything sweet still left in Piper.

She never expected her path to take her to this - executioner of rouge demigods under Gaea's new reign - but this suited her. Never again would she be the weak link, the charmspeaking Beauty Queen of the seven. She was now Princess Piper, the master of her own domain. She rather preferred silencing others than being silenced herself.

So maybe the dress was a little adventurous for modest Piper's old tastes. Maybe walking around in 12 inch spiked heels and a smoky crown of thorns made her look like the bad guy. But Piper was done doing errands for the gods, and being broken and dark and fallen felt so good.

A cruel sneer enveloped her mouth. Bad _did_ feel ever so nice.

Oh well, she couldn't waste hours admiring her wardrobe. Another camper probably needed slaughtering soon.

* * *

"Aren't you glad you sided with me, my child?" purred Gaea with pride. Today was the day Piper was to execute their most important prisoners of war - the Olympians themselves. As the head of Gaea's army, her chosen one turned rotten, it was only fitting that the beautiful half blood do it herself. "Are you not excited to see my naughty grandchildren punished?"

"I'm delighted, I'm sure," answered Piper, because that was what she was expected to do. She was expected to smile viciously and kill ruthlessly and live dangerously. This was her life now, and it was almost disappointing to admit that she had gotten used to it so quickly. She expected being evil to be more of a challenge, or at least more interesting. Being Gaea's assassin queen, while becoming powerful, was starting to get a little _boring_. Sure, it was fun, but you could only murder so many important people before it got a little old.

Within a few short hours, she was in front of that stand, watching the gods and goddesses she had once fought with bow their heads for death, and she was still just as bored. With a sigh, Piper swung her blade, and the skull of Hecate went flying. Hermes received a quick blow to the back, Iris met a swift retribution getting sliced in half, and Hera moaned in anguish as Piper twisted the bronze beneath her ribs (killing that one felt _extremely_ pleasing - she had been fantasizing about it even before she darkened).

Although Gaea had wanted her to lay waste to Zeus last, Piper vanquished him earlier. The very last one to go was her mother, the flippant mother who treated her like an accessory and was never really there.

"Any last words?" Piper hissed, hefting Katropis to the center of Aphrodite's throat. Her mother, gorgeous as she was, simply laughed in the face of her own demise.

"I'm a goddess, my girl. We never really die," she giggled, attempting to clasp her hands like this was all some type of marvelous joke. But it wasn't. Piper was sick of being a joke and now she had the means with which to take revenge. "And even if we did, love can't die. Not even in you."

"You're wrong," she snapped, practically growling through her choppy wild-child bangs. "You can die, and you will, and love right along with it. It has in me."

"Oh, my little Pipes." Piper nearly murdered her right then and there. "Why else would you be here?"

"Because I'm stronger than you and your silly brethren!"

"No," the woman chuckled darkly, face ashen with severity. "It's because you're ever so weak. I suppose it's my fault, after all - beautiful things always break ever so easily." Her mind traveled elsewhere, already a million miles away. "Ever so painfully . . . "

Piper swung. Her aim, as always, was spot on.

* * *

She never assumed Jason would wait for her forever. She knew, in the deep and forbidden recesses of her poisoned heart, in the hidden chambers where the remnants of love still laid, that he would hate her eventually and would move on. However, she was Princess Piper the Powerful and Poisonous.

It pained her to admit that the fact that he was with _Reyna_ now, that roman girl he had served with, actually stung somehow.

Piper was an empty hollow shell. She shouldn't be able to feel this _regret_ anymore.

But she did feel that pain, that remorse over him. She felt it all too well.

Jason and Percy and her _friends_ were out leading a little resistance with the survivors, and Reyna and Jason were a couple.

That didn't mean anything.

It couldn't mean anything, or her delicate happiness was all gone in wisps of smoke.

She couldn't afford to be anything but empty, not now, not ever.

* * *

Jason was captured a month later. She killed him herself, making eye contact with him through every moment leading to his death.

All she saw was a deep, blinding _loathing_ for her reflected in his gaze, mixed with pity and disgust and the remains of a future that would never be. Piper stole it from him, drinking in the sight, trying to feel anything but cold as the boy she loved (and still loves, but that's ridiculous - immortality stripped her of that long ago) died before her. She kicks away his body, lifeless before her, and tries not to waver in her boots.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the mortality that clings to her, the hope and shame and suffering for others drains away, and the cruel numbness envelopes her like a cloak. It fits her rather well, actually, like it was tailored for her.

Piper is a girl of pretty lies and shattered glass and ripped flesh and promises and all the broken things in this world and the next, all rolled into one. She's beauty and pain combined, and against all odds, she's finally composed of darkness.

Against all odds, she likes it.

* * *

 **So, that happened.**

 **Again, this was way darker that what I usually go for, but everybody else was doing a dark Piper AU, so I figured 'why not' and wrote this up in the span of five minutes.**

 **. . . I'm not evil, I swear. This is not the kind of junk that just floats around my head 24/7.**

 **This probably sucked since it was really short notice and this all just came out of nowhere, but please review and tell me if you liked it. I survive off of support and validation, so be sure to look through my stories to find the happier, fluffier PJO pieces. There are several Percabeth things and a Caleo fic, it's not just depressing garbage.**

 **Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this!**


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